Claim me, home

Bojana Kos was born in Yugoslavia in 1990 and now lives in Canberra, Australia. Primarily raised in Far North Queensland, she considers her inability to simply answer the question “Where are you from?” a strength. She has been published in The Canberra Times, Peppercorn and Woroni, and is currently collaborating on a series with Leiden Magazine.

My mother never knew
While punctuating my youth
With promises determined to return
To long mangled childhood streets
Still witnesses of brutish conflict
That having never made it back ‘home’
I came to believe
I’d never find one of my own

Her fear of permanence
In the throng of diaspora
Became my stranded existence
Waiting for a futile reunion
Every day hearing new grief
Of lost old country culture in my being
While the island made it clear
I would never belong to them

There lies a truth of migrant legacy
Amid the simmer of the melting pot
That each new strand in the tapestry
Understands in their bones
That you will always love two places
Your origin, and your saviour
While neither can be relied upon
To truly claim you as their own.